FILED NOT FOR PUBLICATION APR 29 2019 UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS MOLLY C. DWYER, CLERK U.S. COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE NINTH CIRCUIT RENO FUENTES RIOS, Nos. 16-17213 17-15892 Plaintiff-Appellant, D.C. No. 2:07-cv-00790-KJN v. K. BRANDON; et al., MEMORANDUM* Defendants-Appellees. Appeal from the United States District Court for the Eastern District of California Kendall J. Newman, Magistrate Judge, Presiding Argued and Submitted April 18, 2019 San Francisco, California Before: HAWKINS and M. SMITH, Circuit Judges, and LYNN,** District Judge. Plaintiff Reno Fuentes Rios (“Rios”) appeals following a jury verdict for the Defendants in his § 1983 action, alleging error in concluding there was sufficient and reliable evidence supporting his gang validation and removing this question from the * This disposition is not appropriate for publication and is not precedent except as provided by Ninth Circuit Rule 36-3. ** The Honorable Barbara M. G. Lynn, United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas, sitting by designation. jury’s consideration. He also contends the court failed to properly instruct the jury regarding the prison’s notice requirements, allowed prejudicial testimony at trial, and allowed improper lay opinion testimony at trial. We affirm. 1. The district court did not err by reviewing the confidential evidence in camera and concluding there was “some evidence” to support Rios’s gang validation. The “some evidence” standard, which is quite low, requires us to ask only “‘whether there is any evidence in the record that could support the conclusion.’” Bruce v. Ylst, 351 F.3d 1283, 1287 (9th Cir. 2003) (quoting Superintendent v. Hill, 472 U.S. 445, 455-56 (1985)) (emphasis added). “[W]e do not examine the entire record, independently assess witness credibility, or reweigh the evidence.” Id. Here, multiple seized materials and reliable confidential witnesses with first-hand knowledge provided evidence that Rios was affiliated with the “EME” or Mexican mafia gang for a number of years. It was also proper for the court to make this determination, as it was a question of law whether the information relied on by the prison was legally sufficient and reliable to support the validation. See Castro v. Terhune, 712 F.3d 1304, 1314 (9th Cir. 2013); see also Zimmerlee v. Keeney, 831 F.2d 183, 186-87 (9th Cir. 1987). 2. Nor did the district court abuse its discretion in its formulation of jury instructions on Rios’s procedural due process claim. Rios contends the jury 2 instruction should have included a reference to the California prison regulation’s twenty-four-hour notice requirement, but “not every violation of state law amounts to an infringement of constitutional rights,” and “§ 1983 does not provide redress in federal court for violations of state law.” See Samson v. City of Bainbridge Island, 683 F.3d 1051, 1060 (9th Cir. 2012). The instruction as given was an accurate statement of the law. 3. Next, the district court did not abuse its discretion by allowing prejudicial or improper testimony at trial. Rios argues that the district court erred by allowing questioning about Rios’s aliases and immigration status. A witness’s use of false names ...
Original document
Source: All recent Immigration Decisions In All the U.S. Courts of Appeals